Business Pants – 2022-11-07

Hello. Oh, I haven't done that a while. I know you. You're back. Well, no live from your climate changes. November tees. It's a Malarkey Monday edition of business pants. Join as always by our BS correspondent, Matt mascardi. Hey, oh wow. We're blindly blower hater. Really, I like leaf blowers. And today's fun is not Size. Snickers bar called November 7th 2022, sexy story, updates and sleazy, academic paper's. Oh, and to that podcast corresponded, the listen to our show and looked at our description online and critique us for being weird and Meandering. And I say screw you. That's the breaking news for today. All right, let's do it. Come on. I hope he's listening to this one. This one's more important. Sexy story updates, Matt. Yeah, there were a lot. There was a lot of news this weekend, we don't have a choice. So let's start with Twitter. yeah, and again, I ask you When they officially go private I guess, I keep asking you this, when they officially go private, do we not have to talk about them? But Elon is, is the CEO of 1000 public traded companies. So we kind of have to keep talking about he is and I have to keep saying, where is the board of that traded company because Elon clearly isn't doing his job at the traded company. He's a little too busy right now. I would love an announcement from the Tesla board saying, like what the f happened to our CEO, how the hell is this? That would be lovely. I got a bunch of Twitter headlines so you can just, let me roll through this, you can stop and give your opinions up to you. It's entirely up to you. Oh, we'll play it by year. We'll see what it goes in, no particular order. This is the last, this is the last two days. It's been it's great for us. A lot of ways, it wasn't mad or sack who said that, I asked him to rate the whole, Twitter musk disaster, and I was like all depressed and emo about it and he said, no, this is great for us. This is, this is the best because it's unending stories, right? It is it is, it's like watching a car wreck in reverse. And Matt, since I'm still name dropping, you want to come back on our show and tell us some other things that are smart. Do that. Reach out to us? Yeah. Okay. No particular order. First Twitter asks some fired workers to return. This is I'm I don't I've never seen a headline like this. Have you Laying off half the company in a week. I don't know how the hell they made these decisions so quickly, he just took over an already decided which half of the company to lay off. Now, they're asking something to come back, this is the never heard this forever headline. I've ever read. There were actually I did notice that Business Insider who went from Summer travel chaos that included like they, they would not let my dog eat its Artisan meal on the plane. I'm out there aged. Yeah, there was a good one today about the one of the planes had to land. Because the toilet was full. Yeah. Like I'm serious. That was headlined. Today. Those are the business inside are basically made its bones all summer on that. Now I saw like three or four headlines that were like Twitter laid me off while I was in the shower too. While I was sleeping, thank you for bringing that up. I didn't collect those because as much as I want to make fun of Twitter and Elon Okay, but you just sleep, a third of your day, then they might fire you. During that look, that's a complaint that they fired you while you were sleeping. I just, I just like that. Like it's, it's made so easy when you fire have to staff many of whom you've never assessed or met and then immediately have to ask a lot of them to come back to work. So that Business Insider can say, I was fired while eating yakisoba and then immediately rehired because they didn't know who I was, right? Like it's Emma's father for us. You're the CEO of a company, a major important company. That's how the hell. Walked me through this. You buy a company, you immediately lay off the most important executive. How the hell? How the hell do you decide who to fire? I don't get that part of it. How do you know? I'm not you answer that question. You fire. The ones that you feel like insult, most woke? Yeah, that's a good tease. All right, let's move on. Elon Musk threatens to the thermonuclear name and shame companies that pause advertising on Twitter. He is, here's his tweet twitter has had Twitter has had a massive drop in Revenue. I don't see in the back this up, but whatever due to active is groups, pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content. Moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists extremely messed up. Elon says, they're trying to destroy free speech in America. And then Matt, he goes on to say that there's going to be a thermo nuclear naming and shaming of these companies. I mean, there's so much to unpack in that one. Go ahead. First of all, he blamed activists not the companies, he said it was activists, who was that? Like who were there activists? Well, the activists and, and activist gluing their hands to paintings. Nobody say, the companies probably got a little uncomfortable, when I shared a conspiracy theory about Nancy Pelosi's husband, right? Like and word shot up immediately increase in the n-word know. Wasn't that it was activists or in fact it. Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. Then he goes on to say, he's gonna go thermonuclear on them. How many times have you threatened and Advertiser? And they were like, oh, okay, well, advertised with you like that doesn't seem like a great business model. And how about this is your CEO during a time of a terrible, ongoing war in the Ukraine, where there's a lot of fear in the world that Putin might actually drop on nuclear. You know, you use nuclear weapons, that's his word choice. This is your CEO. This is this is your guy, that's your guy. And, and then, and then claimed they're trying to destroy free speech in America. So then goes the next step to say, I'm mad that I'm losing money because I bought something stupid. I need to blame somebody. So I'm gonna blame nameless activists well, and I'm gonna be naming and shaming companies themselves. That decided To Cave to those activists and oh, PS, it's about Free Speech. It's like if you had free speech to the end of any sentence, is that make you patriotic enough? That you can't be culpable for anything that you've done or said ever. Well to me, this is this is probably the number one problem I have with our Tech CEOs and Founders is that they have been emboldened somehow by who. I'm not sure to what bill to solve these great questions, great philosophical questions that we've been wrestling with for years. I mean, there are whole Tracks. Their their whole law programs, a great universities, dedicated around the issues, like free speech and philosophy program, and, and Elon Musk reports to have the answers. He knows how to solve Free Speech. Where the hell does he get this notion from? Where is where he has billions of dollars? Because he's Rich? That's it, that's it, you didn't. All right, there was more qualifications. This next headline is for you. Jack Dorsey was one of your assholes of the week on the Friday show. Last week. So go back and download that episode. In fact, not only download that episode but higher 10,000 bahts to also download the episodes, so we can get our sponsors. Yeah, please, let's do this. Okay. Here's a headline. Former Twitter, CEO, Jack, Dorsey apologizes to employees. This one's just weird to me. I know, Matt's excited, nothing weird. Here's the quote, here's the call. This is weird to me. This is ego out of control Folks at Twitter past and present are strong and resilient He says they will always find a way no matter how difficult the moment, what the fuck he's talking about. I realize, many are angry with me. Yeah, I own the responsibility for why everyone is in this situation. I grew the company size too quickly, I apologize for that and then he goes on to say, I am grateful for in love everyone who has ever worked on Twitter. I don't expect that to be mutual in this moment or ever and I understand, oh, that's good. Why don't you just on the head with your business? When you're done? Really, what is this cycle? This ego cycle? Yoga Bible? What's going on here? He's very he's like he feels deeply and this is this, the Twitter billionaire version of The Crying CEO on LinkedIn or whatever like this worst. He's very upset about how he made all these tweets or whatever they call themselves. You know, he brought in so many because he loved them so much. And then on his way out, by the way, management team sucks and I hate my board and they're terrible and Elon is the quote singular solution. You all singular solution to how possible, by the way, too. And then here, that all eight billion people on Earth and then, yeah, that was well, he vetted about solution Elon did before he fired the staff and then he like comes in and fires. You and Jack comes out and says I'm sorry, it's my fault. Man, I have a simultaneous. Love this. And hate everyone. A lot of companies in Tech are having hiring freezes. Why couldn't have Jack had a firing freeze. How about a one-year firing freeze after must takes over the company? How about that? I don't want to support when I support the workers that way. What I like about all the things happening and you're going to talk about this later too, is that there is a recession happening and there's like an economic. There's Mass firing, its problem, only in Tech. The biggest Egos and billionaire College dropouts on the planet are all have doing the same thing. They're all firing. Lots of people and somehow I don't think it's going to affect Jack, though. I think Jack's going to be okay, he's gonna be okay. This is a perfect time for us math time. Do you love some populist match? Let's Let's Jack, Dorsey, rolled over 1 billion dollars in Twitter, stock like this week. Matt, a mere, 15% of that total, Which is less than 4% of his net. Worth could provide a 40,000 dollar, sorry. Check to the 3700 people laid out that he loves, he said, he loves them. So we talked about, we talked about Golden hellos golden parachutes. All that what about a sorry check? What about a 40,000? Sorry, check What do you not a capitalist? You don't say sorry. You just say you love them and move on to your role in your billions. All right. Jack Dorsey also criticized Elon musk's decision to Rebrand the bird watch feature to community notes saying it's the most boring Facebook name ever that that to me. That he took the time to say that at all. Yeah, that we care of all we care about is that are happening at Twitter. Yeah. Renaming birdwatch to community notes. Was the one he was, he Felt need to comment on I guess their way of saying that they're super serious. Now, I think actually, that's his way of making a joke with his buddy. Elon. He's like, he's joking. Yeah, moving off a jack back to Elon. Elon Musk warned Twitter, will permanently ban impersonators after he gets parodied by verified users. Now, let's not forget Matt just last week. Elon Musk said, comedy is now legal as he took over the company. He tweeted this, he tweeted the CEO. The CEO tweeted comedy is now legal and over the weekend. Several comedians were having fun with Elon, they were periodic his account calling themselves Elon and saying some funny stuff and he is permanently abandoned banding them. That's number. Comedy is Lee. I mean, this is what a mess. It's really great. But actually it's shows. The whole point of this is Vanity project, right? It's basically I get to say whatever I want to Millions upon millions of people. That's all this is about this is all I want. That's why anybody else to have fun. It's only so what kind of fun Well, also stabbing his himself in the back there. I guess. You know, he was supposed to be the Free Speech King, but I kind of stabbed himself in the back by permanently Banning them. And by the way, Matt, he didn't go to his Counsel on this. Remember he's creating this fake Council. The deal with these issues, how he made this decision to ban them. Ah, no, he okay. He said the question will. I think he's already suspended in blocked like Kathy Griffin and Valerie Bertinelli bunch of people Sarah Silverman. I don't know if it's a permanent banned. Notice, these are again, he's already stabbing his Free Speech Mantra in the back as he not the three people. He's just mentioned, are women all so right? True? Yes, yes. That's like a weird coincidence. Not only did he say that, but he also said this over the weekend that musk says that Twitter needs to become the most accurate source of information about the world. And again, this is a this is a week after he shared conspiracy theories that you mentioned before about Nancy, Pelosi's husband. So this is just a fire. It's what he called a train look like and this is where we have a hard time because this is not a publicly traded company. He can do whatever he wants with this company. The only question about all of this is while he's tweeting this and changing that policy. And he had to actually have read like Kathy Griffin. And Valerie Valerie Bertinelli had to have seen their posts and read them, and then blocked it. And then to read them and then called it, the only thing that we should be thinking about is you are the head of a publicly traded company. You are spending so much time doing this bullshit. On your vanity project? Yeah. Where are you at Tesla? Where are you? I think, are you there? Are you going all meetings? What you're trying to say is, where is the Tesla board. Why aren't they speaking of where is the board? We get to move off of Twitter now, meta UTSA this story. According to the Wall Street Journal, meta to lay off thousands of Staff starting this week 1,000. I'm hoping all of that stuff is on the Facebook, Instagram moderator side so that he could take all that money and plow it into the metaverse. So he gets real legs. Speaking of meta Business Insider chiming in with a story that that, you know, we talk about all the time. So I don't know what, I don't know. What the problem was with businesses. Are they should just say listen to our podcast. Here's the headline from today, Matt, here's why. Mark Zuckerberg Mark Zuckerberg can't be fired. A CEO of meta. That's the story. Oh wow. They just realized he's a dual-class dictator. Yeah, it's just tell your reader to listen to us. Well tell, we'll tell them, I think tell them how the world really works. I I do do I do think it's deeply deeply ironic that they just realized that they're just talk. They're like what? What? Like this one the case for 10 years when the way IPO, 2011, 11 years. How can you not be? I don't get it. What is it? It's really unbelievable. In fact, Business Insider If you want to do that story, why don't you add to that list? Evan Spiegel, and the CEO of spotify and the CEO? They're like, dozens of Texas ones, that cannot be fired. Yeah, and these are the probably the only CEOs making decisions that you actually care about because you're so Tech, obsessed and media obsessed really wow. Yeah, moving on, here's a yeah. Another reason why Lebron James should care who owns companies in a secret reason for the world to buy board, saber metrics Here's the headline. American billionaires political spending, overwhelmingly leans, Republican. you know, there's actually by Elizabeth Kemp at a Harvard that shows that inside of boardrooms and management teams. They are like 66 to 33 Republican. And these are the woke corporations that were battle. This is It's Insanity. It's Insanity. The world that we even are talking about this. But yeah, LeBron by board, saber metrics. It's just a LeBron. I don't know LeBron's listening, but I know I think Russell Westbrook is listening. I know that. So, yeah, let's get in touch. Let's work together. I mean, interesting to you, we can you, you want to know like, who owns what? We got? All the answers right here. And honestly, like all jokes aside, you're understandably angry that the increase of the use of the n-word and a bunch of hate on Twitter because the Elon took over. So you might want to care who runs Twitter as all. I'm saying, that's a good idea. Two more quick ones. Oh, Black Rock spends record. On us political campaigns. As ESG fight intensifies, you care about this. Now you don't care. This is I mean, this is like they issue a statement and then they go behind doors and Lobby, I can't. I had a post on LinkedIn the other day where I got angry because it's like, where the fuck are you all like, what do we? What is this like that post? Yeah, like that one. Why we why are we quietly hiding in the shadows and thinking? Facts are going to save ESG data? Yes, she did, is just data. Can we just be out there? I would. And I said this in a woke Wednesday, a couple weeks ago where I just said, BlackRock you got three options you the kick out. These idiots, like, stop, stop. Having them as clients you sue them. And if you can't do those two things, then just say your woke just lean into it. Just be like, you know what? You're right, we're woke. We're the woke is motherfukers on the planet. Have you ever seen anyone more woke than a multi-trillion dollar asset manager? There's nothing more woke than that pure capitalism. And to be fair block, the opposed Of woke is being, you know, sleep. You want to be a sleep. What's gonna sell? How You Gonna sell that? I gonna sell. The joseon is awake. Not, whoa. Awake not well, yeah, I'm not gonna talk about that. And finally, let's end with some fun stuff. Matt in my sexy story updates, for Monday, November 7th, climate activists glue hands to iconic, Goya paintings in Madrid. So we got more. Oh like that is working. You like this? I know you like gluing hands and look, I think this is like super like super glue or you think this is like a cop-out rubber cement. It's definitely Elmer's. They're not doing so that doesn't count super glow. I want to tear off but here's the thing actually yeah I made fun of the climate activists, a little bit, not a lot bit because I empathize or sympathize I don't empathize. But the fact is cop, 27 is happening right now. It's started this started yesterday, it is climate week, and it's happening in Egypt. and, The climate activists gluing their hands to make change to famous. Paintings is about the same amount of change that gets made by a bunch of, very wealthy politicians flying in from all over the world to talk about not doing anything. And the reason why they can't do it doing that every single year. What's the fucking difference? Is there a difference in nothing? Really changes that much. Anyway, so you might as well glue your hand? It seems like just glue your hands of stuff that's supporting. Why don't we have? Like the like the head of China and the UK, who's not there? And the US and India and glue their hands together and then force them to come up with Solutions. One of you glue your hands to Mark, Zuckerberg's forehead. That could be fun. That would be great. It's a lot of forehead real estate. It works out. And finally, here's this headline for you, Matt. So I could cheer you up a little bit before we go to your nerd or The National Park Service Warren's visitors. Not not to lick Sonoran Desert. But I I'm Matt help me out here, isn't this gonna increase toad looking honestly, if there were people not to do something. If there was asking them to do it, make me want to lick a toad more. It would be something like, consider looking a toad until now. Now, I'm like, that's that, that could be fun. I need a vacation. I need something to do. I want to see the desert? Why not lick a toad while I'm there now? Wouldn't you look a toe? All right? What he got mad. All right. Come on. Let's move on to our neural alert. It's Monday. That means it's nerd alert day because we're back to doing normal things. This is a throwback to one of my favorite ever. On papers that I've ever read. I actually, I don't think we ever did this as a nerd alert, but we did. I did read this while I was at the mothership at msci, it's an older paper from 2018, it's by Philip Galia, Luke renin Boog and Young's out. And the title of the paper is Beauty and appearance in corporate director elections. This sounds good. This sounds, this sounds. This sounds amazing. Is it? Or is there? It's already the greatest paper and I want to say this, I did, this is part of inspiration for. We are bringing on a developer for board. Saber metrics, whose PhD was in facial similarity software. He basically created AI to scan faces and create similarities scores for faces interesting. Um, so we're going to this this paper and that yeah, thesis that he did is perfect like Venn diagram of board saber metrics. So we're going to use on a corporate boards but here's what they did. I'm not gonna bury the leads are just going to go step by step. They asked the following questions. Number one, Is your face in advantage? In director election? Oh my God, I love this question. The answer is, yes, it is really because I have seen a lot of these directors, I'm kind of surprised by this. So, what they had is, they had people, he's an Amazon Mechanical Turks to rate, directors faces, on the following four, five issues Beauty shoes, Competence. Wait rating their faces for competence. Yeah, they're ready. Do they look competent? Your step basically said, do they look beautiful? Do they look competent? Do they look trustworthy? Do they look likeable and do? They look intelligent? So this is like at the director grew a mustache like, on their cheek instead of under their nose. They be like, that's not very cool. It would be like if they had a monocle and a pipe in their hand. Do that's trustworthy, right? Yeah. Fully dressed for they, they corrected for bias like, for instance, if a one of the mechanical Turks only like blonde women, so only gave like full marks to blonde women, so they corrected for something like that and what they found was that in overall scoring increase. So if you scored the best on all of these things, overall, scoring crease of one deviation above average. So this is like, I'm gonna understand this. I'm gonna be like, it's a big score increase, okay? It was worth 6.5 percent, less Des In a, in a vote. Wow. So your you score well on all those features your face. This is just your face. You haven't said a word. This is just a picture of your face. It's worth 6.5% less dissent and that was statistically significant number two question. Are you ready? Yes, I'm ready. Does only Beauty matter? Is it beauty that striving this? Another great question? Yeah, the answer was no, why? Because beauty is associated with women. Like why, why? Well they asked about gender next apparently directors, look for faces that exude confidence trustworthiness alongside Beauty. So Beauty by itself was the least statistically significant bone. You added it to confidence trust, I'm concerned by that. I feel some massage in the in there. I'm just feeling it. They found no correlation though. This is where you should feel your concern, no zero correlation between whether a direct or was rated as looking competent. And their actual education, their actual education and whether or not they got rated as looking competent were uncorrelated. So, it answers, the questions are we here at business pants? Free flow, are we the only ones in the world who actually read the bios of directors and the answer is, yes. Yeah, that's the only one care and us and the group that wrote this paper. The next question, they asked was just Beauty matter equally for male and female directors, does okay, these measures and the answer to this was no, it doesn't matter. Equally in fact, it matters less for women than for men. Why? Because they posit that there are so few women. They apparently can't get get voted out as easily, no matter how they look. I don't know. I feel about this one. I'm just telling you what the paper suggests. Yeah, this this that's troubling. Yeah. And then the last question they asked is, does it matter more for executive directors or non-executive directors? I got away for the drum roll, it matters more for executive directors, huh? Doesn't that seem counterintuitive to you? Yes, investors apparently. Recognize that they're not executive directors are just puppets, they don't care. They're not decision makers. And this is where it immediately overlaps with board sabermetrics. I was gonna say we can help you identify puppets. You can't get this from your typical ESG data provider. We can identify puppets, man. Executive directors is one of the factors that we use to determine influence in the boardroom. And my guess is, if you match faces with influence, you would see a really high correlation because investors love their pretty directors to be highly influential. I have notes on how many electors elections this was and whether or not it was they corrected for like dual class and stuff like that. But none of that matters. What matters here is that beauty does better in the boardroom to some know what really matters is getting out of here under 30 minutes and we're just barely going to make it. That's Damien Raul's. I'm at Scotty, we are free float if you like this. Listen tomorrow we have the corporate theaters, don't we? Corporate Theater West. Absolutely listen to that show otherwise come back on Wednesday for woke Wednesday. Yeah, David goodbye.